agonyaunt | Ask a Manager: Poetry Assignment

we have to write deeply personal poems and share them at a staff meeting

I work for a small values-driven company, and recently there has been an effort to do more relationship building among staff. Ahead of our next all staff meeting, we are required to write a “where I’m from” poem, based on the format of this work by George Ella Lyon.

While it seems like a fine introspective journaling activity, I am uncomfortable with the requirement to write them and share them with our coworkers and leadership. Especially since the instructions state “Make yourself cry a little. It should do that” and “The key is making this as specific and personal as possible.” The suggested categories include “the worst things that you have been told,” “accidents or traumatic experiences,” and “losses.”

I’ve checked out your responses to other reader questions like the mandatory feelings chart, and the mandatory mental health check-in, but wanted to get your insight on this as well. I don’t like the idea of having to write/share poetry at all, much less this type of forced vulnerability exercise. I feel like if I object it’ll be seen as anti-bonding or anti-team building. What do you think?

What the hell! This is really inappropriate to require of people at work.

I mean, if you want to do a poetry exercise, fine. I’m not a fan, and you’re likely to irritate a bunch of other non-fans of such activities, but as long as there are relatively loose parameters, people can decide for themselves how serious they want to get with it … and can do something silly if they don’t want to get personal.

But “make this as personal as possible” and “it should make you cry” and “tell us about your trauma” … my head is exploding.

Are you comfortable pushing back on this? It would be utterly reasonable for you to say, “I appreciate the recent efforts to build relationships among the staff, but this crosses a lot of boundaries for me, and I imagine for some others. I am not comfortable being asked to share traumas or painful personal episodes at work, or being asked to make myself cry during a work activity. Can we reconsider this and either provide an alternative for people who aren’t comfortable with this or let people opt out?”

Ideally you’d get other coworkers to join in saying this with you so that you’re not the sole objector.

It’s true that you might be seen as anti-bonding or anti-team-building. That’s not the worst thing in the world though. Sometimes there’s enough value in speaking up and saying “this is messed up” that it’s worth spending some political capital to do it.

But if you’re not comfortable doing that, I’d just ignore some of these instructions. Write a poem that isn’t personal, that doesn’t talk about trauma. Keep it light, and if you’re called out on it, you can say, “I didn’t have anything more personal that I was comfortable sharing in a work setting.”

This seems to be the year that boundary violations at work have gone off the deep end.

Ask a Manager: Poetry Assignment

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